Among those who value originality, inspiration,
eccentricity, and character - as well as talent that hovers somewhere on
the outskirts of genius, the story of Paul Thorn is
already familiar. Now, Thorn reveals another layer of his fascinating
history on the albumPimps
& Preachers, addressing that subject on the title cut and
in the intriguing "family portrait" he painted for the cover, which
highlights his daddy the preacher and his uncle the pimp.

The
cover depicts a teeming street scene at the unlikely intersection of
Redemption Lane and Turn Out Boulevard. Two figures dominate: a pimp and
a preacher, both dressed to the nines beneath broad-brimmed hats,
surrounded by hookers, holy rollers and hangers-on, and all on their
paths to salvation or perdition. Nearly lost in this tumult is a small
boy banging a tambourine branded with the name of Jesus, but backed up
against a streetwalker holding a fistful of greenbacks.

“That little boy represents me,” says Thorn. “I'm in
the church group, but my eyes are looking back to the street where all
the sin is going on. It shows me being intrigued by the broad world.
That's why I made this my album cover. It describes who I am.”

Born in Tupelo, Mississippi and raised among the same
spirits (and some of the actual people) who nurtured a young Elvis
generations before, Thorn has rambled down back roads and jumped out of
airplanes, worked for years in a furniture factory, battled four-time
world champion boxer Roberto Durán on national television, signed with
and been dropped by a major label, opened for
Bonnie Raitt, Mark Knopfler, and John
Prine among many other headliners, and made some of the most emotionally
restless yet fully accessible music of our time.

Still, Thorn's story has never been complete. If you
follow it back through his songs, at some point near the beginning the
mysteries gather like a mist, obscuring the picture and leaving
unanswered the question of how he acquired his ability to find
brilliance buried in shadows, darkness in daylight, poetry in the
mundane, and truth in the brutal beauties of life.

Pimps
& Preachersaddresses this
lingering riddle. On Thorn's ninth album, released on his own Perpetual
Obscurity label (through Thirty Tigers/RED), the answer begins in the
title and the cover image, painted by Thorn with the same power,
paradoxes, rough edges and passions that animate his writing and
performance. Specifically, it takes us to a central theme of Thorn's
youth: the pull of polar opposites - one representing the severe
ecstasies of fundamental faith and the other, the pleasures stigmatized
and yet glamorized by the church.

Similar ambiguities fuel the work of other artists to
whom Thorn can be compared, from Tom Waits and Lucinda Williams all the
way back to Robert Johnson and Hank Williams. What stands Thorn apart
from this august company is how personally this dichotomy guided his
formative years. In his seminal albums, particularly his landmarkMission
Temple Fireworks Stand, his upbringing as the son of a Church of
God Pentecostal minister became a matter of record. What hasn't been
clear, though, is the parallel impact of his father's brother, who
showed up suddenly from California when Thorn was 12 years old.

“He was a pimp back in the day,” Thorn says. “I had
never met him before, so when he came back to Mississippi he had all
this street wisdom and I started hanging around him as well as my
father. My father was my mentor, but I learned a lot from my uncle too.
Everything I've accomplished has been influenced by the time I spent
around these two men.”

Thorn remains close to his father and his uncle
today, closer than ever since his uncle has long abandoned his former
livelihood. Yet the qualities that so strongly affected Thorn endure in
the lyric to the title track, which honors them both; one for teaching
him to love, and the other for teaching him to fight. For all the moral
questions raised by the choices each man made, Thorn came to accept what
they represented as essential and complementary. His embrace of
opposites leads to a unity of spirit in Thorn's music, which is brought
fully to life by his gift as a narrative writer.

This message rings throughout much of Pimps &
Preachers, perhaps most intimately on “I Hope I'm Doing This Right.” The
confession implicit in its title is tempered by Thorn's conviction that
life is a full-color proposition.

“The
song says 'Hank Williams was in the darkness when he sang I Saw the
Light. I believe there's good in everyone, I hope I'm doing this
right',” Thorn reflects. “I was talking to somebody the other day about
this and they said, 'As big an alcoholic and a screw-up as Hank Williams
was, how did he ever write a song that beautiful?' And I said, 'He was
able to write itbecausehe
was an alcoholic and a screw-up. Otherwise, he wouldn't have even
recognized where the darkness and light were.”

Elsewhere onPimps
& Preachers, Thorn conveys this theme through brief but epic
vignettes - parables, almost - in the tradition of his father's Biblical
exegeses. “Love Scar” grew from a conversation Thorn had with a woman
backstage at London's Royal Albert Hall shortly before he would open for
Sting. He noticed that her shoulder bore a tattoo of an eye shedding a
tear. When he asked what it meant, her answer was sadder and deeper than
he had expected.

“She told me about how she met a handsome guy and
they had some drinks together,” Thorn recalls. “She had a one-night
stand with him and got so distracted by his charm that she went out and
got this tattoo because of his opening line when he had started to hit
on her: 'If I could be a tear rolling down your cheek and die on your
lips, my life would be complete.' Unfortunately, that tattoo is with her
forever, even though he was gone the next day.”

Each
track recounts its own story while clarifying and reinforcing Thorn's
broader vision. The comic yet unsettlingly candid account of romantic
opportunity lost too soon on “Nona Lisa,” the immeasurable intensity of
love captured in the artfully offhand lyrics of “That's Life” (taken
entirely from words spoken to Thorn by his mother), the assurances
extended to all who suffer through uncertain times in “Better Days
Ahead” - every moment on Pimps & Preachers speaks universally but with a
fluency that stems from the earthy blues, haunted old-school country,
and stripped-down urgency of the gospel music that surrounded Thorn
throughout his Mississippi upbringing.

But Thorn's knack for using snapshots from everyday
routine as the elements of this exquisite writing owes entirely to his
distinctive abilities and commitment to linking these elements into a
profession of mercy and forgiveness - ultimately, the real message ofPimps
& Preachers.

“Look, there's nothing wrong with songs about holding
hands or sitting by the phone and waiting for a girl to call,” he says.
“But I wrote songs like that when I was 15. I'm trying now to sing about
things that mean something to me, for people who want something real,
who not only want forgiveness but are willing to give it.”

“Besides,” he concludes, bringingPimps
& Preachersback home.
“If I came back to my dad or my uncle with songs like that now, they'dbothkick
my ass! So I'm still just trying to follow their lead.”